Despite reluctance by the prosecutors' key witness, who crawfished from his initial statements to police and testified this week he could not remember seeing his friend shot to death, a Jefferson Parish jury convicted a Kenner man Wednesday of second-degree murder.

Warren A. Sinceno Jr.

Warren A. Sinceno Jr., 22, will spend the rest of his life in prison for the murder of Corey Lewis, 19, who was gunned down April 7, 2009, near his parents' apartment in the 2500 block of Illinois Street. Sinceno, who claimed he was defending himself against threats from his longtime rival, also was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm, because he had two cocaine convictions.

Lewis, a beefy kid with a large smile, was by several accounts acting aggressively toward Sinceno, who was helping his mother move into an apartment down the block. Lewis was shot in the back of the neck, the bullet exiting his mouth and never recovered. He dropped face down onto the concrete parking lot in front of 2530 Illinois St., about a half-block from where Sinceno fired a single shot with what he said was a .38-caliber revolver.

"I think the right decision was made," Lewis' mother Alicia Ann Lewis said of the verdict. "I know the right decision was made."

James Joseph of the Westwego area, Lewis' friend since they were 12, told Kenner police Sgt. Brian McGregor after the shooting that Lewis was racing neighborhood kids on bicycles on Illinois when he saw Lewis and Sinceno exchange words down the block. He said as Lewis made his way back, he saw Sinceno raise a gun and drop the arm, saying something about the children in the way. Sinceno raised the gun again and fired one shot, striking Lewis, Joseph told police.

Joseph said he then fired three shots back with Lewis' 9mm semiautomatic pistol, which Lewis had hid on the wheel of a parked truck. Joseph hid the pistol, the serial number of which was obliterated, nearby on Idaho Street but later pointed it out to police.

Joseph, however, ignored his subpoena to testify before a grand jury in August 2009 and was arrested last week as a material witness to ensure his testimony this week. Just last week he told an investigator that Lewis told him to get the gun during the altercation. Yet by the time he sat before the jury, Joseph couldn't recall even whether he was on Illinois Street that day.

"I can't really remember, but I believe that I was," he told Assistant District Attorney Myles Ranier, who then showed Joseph a photograph taken by police of him standing near Lewis' body.

"Is he taking a nap? What is he doing?" Ranier asked. "Did you witness him getting shot?"

"I really can't remember," Joseph said, a response he repeated often this week.

In closing arguments Wednesday, Ranier, who prosecuted the case with Assistant District Attorney Sunny Funk, suggested Joseph was frightened.

"He got a case of amnesia when he had to come in here and see the defendant and look him in the face," Ranier said.

Sinceno did not testify. His attorney, Tracy Sheppard, asked jurors to put themselves in her client's shoes in light of Joseph's accusation, saying Joseph was not credible. She pointed out there was no evidence of which kind of bullet killed Lewis and suggested Joseph could have been the killer, greeting skeptically the claim that Sinceno was able to shoot Lewis in the neck with a pistol from nearly a half-block away. She said several witnesses told police they heard Sinceno tell Lewis to go away three times, but that Lewis kept returning.

"This would almost be a joke if the consequences against him (Sinceno) weren't so drastic," Sheppard said.

After the shooting, Sinceno's mother, Terri Sinceno-Pennington, drove him to St. Francisville, where he was arrested six days later. Sinceno-Pennington was charged with being an accessory after the fact to the murder, but the prosecutors dropped the charges this week and forced her to testify against her son. She admitted she saw her son with a gun but didn't see him shoot it, and she alleged she feared her son would be harmed because Lewis was in a gang and had tried to harm her children before. She had no proof of the claim.

"I think it was self-defense, because Corey Lewis had been shooting at my boys," she said of her sons.

Judge John Molaison of the 24th Judicial District Court will sentence Sinceno May 12.